Spring. Summer. Fall. Winter. Boring. Ancient Japan had 72 microseasons each lasting about five days. They each have wonderfully evocative names like “Spring Winds Thaw the Ice” and “The Maple and Ivy Turn Yellow.” We just finished “The Bear Retreats to its Den,” and this microseason 64, falling immediately after the solstice, is called “The Common Heal-All Sprouts. (more…)
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Why just four seasons? Ancient Japan had 72 microseasons
“Replicants are like any other machine. They’re either a benefit or a hazard. If they’re a benefit, it’s not my problem.” In theaters October 6, 2017.
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First look at Blade Runner 2049!
Ghost sharks, aka chimaeras, are elusive relatives of sharks and rays that live in the black depths of the ocean, as far down as 2,600 meters. The Ghost Shark was captured on video by a remotely operated vehicle deployed on a geology expedition by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in waters off Hawaii and California. The scientists who analyzed the video think that it’s a pointy-nosed blue chimaera (Hydrolagus trolli) that usually calls the waters off Australia and New Zealand home. This is the first time researchers have known this species to swim in the Northern Hemisphere. From National Geographic : Unlike those more well-known sharks, chimaeras don’t have rows of ragged teeth, but instead munch up their prey—mollusks, worms, and other bottom-dwellers—with mineralized tooth plates. A pattern of open channels on their heads and faces, called lateral line canals, contain sensory cells that sense movement in the water and help the ghost sharks locate lunch. And perhaps most fascinating, male chimaeras sport retractable sex organs on their foreheads.
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First ever video of Ghost Shark, with sex organ on its head, alive in the ocean
I’ve had these beautiful antique glasses for well over a decade. Retrospecs & Co. , the folks who sold them to me, have also taken fantastic care of getting me lenses, and an upgrade, over the many years. (more…)
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Authentic early American eyewear
An “authorized” reproduction of the legendary Voynich Manuscript is finally available in print form , published by Yale University from new photographs taken for the purpose. Yale’s Beinecke Library owns the document and has taken its sweet time putting out a decent art book. The quality is better than the popular “unauthorized” edition published last year; that one uses older scans widely available on the web, but I suppose was good enough to force the university’s hand. The first authorized copy of this mysterious, much-speculated-upon, one-of-a-kind, centuries-old puzzle. The Voynich Manuscript is produced from new photographs of the entire original and accompanied by expert essays that invite anyone to understand and explore the enigma. Many call the fifteenth-century codex, commonly known as the “Voynich Manuscript,” the world’s most mysterious book. Written in an unknown script by an unknown author, the manuscript has no clearer purpose now than when it was rediscovered in 1912 by rare books dealer Wilfrid Voynich. The manuscript appears and disappears throughout history, from the library of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II to a secret sale of books in 1903 by the Society of Jesus in Rome. The book’s language has eluded decipherment, and its elaborate illustrations remain as baffling as they are beautiful. For the first time, this facsimile, complete with elaborate folding sections, allows readers to explore this enigma in all its stunning detail, from its one-of-a-kind “Voynichese” text to its illustrations of otherworldly plants, unfamiliar constellations, and naked women swimming though fantastical tubes and green baths. The Voynich Manuscript [Amazon]
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New Voynich Manuscript reproduction uses new photos, looks great
Skier Mathieu Bijasson didn’t think it was insane enough to ski down the steepest faces of the French Alps during the day, so he rigged up some skis and poles with LED lighting and did it at night. The result is visually beautiful and teeth-clenchingly terrifying all at once. (more…)
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Freeskiing. At night. On LED-covered skis.
reMarkable ‘s 10.3″ tablet has an e-ink display with a paper-like texture, a digital pencil with 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity, and promises to finally replace all that paper in your workspace. The pitch: read, write and sketch, all on one gadget . Unlike traditional paper, reMarkable connects to the digital world when you need it to. Your thoughts, whether they’re words or sketches, are instantly synced to reMarkable’s cloud service and made available on all your devices. Documents and ebooks are easily transferred for reading and reviewing with pen in hand. reMarkable connects to the internet for easy sharing and collaboration across devices. You can even take notes on one device and have it appear on a second device, in real time. It’s 10.2″ by 6.9″ and a quarter inch thick. It weighs less than a pound, and the 1872 x 1404 pixel display works out at 225 pixels per inch. It runs a Linux and has an ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 512MB of RAM and WiFi. It claims a latency of 55ms and the demo video shows performance similar to the iPad Pro, which they say has 60ms latency. Wacom tablet hardware polls at
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ReMarkable e-Ink sketching slate pitched at "paper people"
Muckrock has been sending Freedom of Information requests to state police forces to find out how they’re using “cell-site simulators” (AKA IMSI catchers / Stingrays ), and they hit the motherlode with the Virginia State Police. (more…)
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Virginia State cops have blown a fortune on useless cellphone spying gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvjZGKwKvY In Does The Online Card Payment Landscape Unwittingly Facilitate Fraud? , a new paper in IEEE Security & Privacy , researchers from the University of Newcastle demonstrate a technique for guessing secruity details for credit-card numbers in six seconds — attackers spread their guesses out across many websites at once, so no website gets enough bad guesses to lock the card or trigger a fraud detection system. (more…)
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Crooks can guess Visa card details in six seconds by querying lots of websites at once
Using Japanese sharpening stones of various grits and considerable prices, Junskitchen set out to try and make an edge of a $1 kitchen knife. The results are impressive—but how long will they last? [1,000 and 6,000] grits would be enough for a normal household knife. I used grits 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 8,000, and 12,000 in this video. The higher the number, the finer the sanding and the sharper the knife will be.
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Man attempts to sharpen a dollar-store kitchen knife